Azure Batch updates for May 2017

24 May 2017

New and important Azure Batch capabilities are now available:

Low-priority VMs to enable compute at a fraction of the price (preview):

Low-priority VMs are allocated from surplus compute capacity and are available for up to an 80% discount, enabling certain types of workloads to run for a significantly reduced cost or allowing you to do much more for the same cost.

Support for built-in output file upload from pool nodes to Azure Blob storage:

Batch has always provided the built-in ability to download files by copying them from Azure Blob storage to the pool nodes via task resource files. Now there is built-in support to persist task output files to Blob storage. You can specify output files on a task.

Output file support is available only for pools that you create by using virtual machine configuration (not cloud service configuration).